False evidence

Chapter 33 Cursed Poisoning (1)

Gao and others haven't shown up for several days.

Sharing a hospital room with Pidan was almost certainly a deliberate arrangement by Gao and that old fox. Fortunately, the mother and son, especially Pidan's mother, had a good impression of me, and the two of us got along fairly well.

That afternoon, the monkey came to the hospital again and asked me as soon as he saw me if I was alright.

I shook my head.

He suddenly grinned mischievously and whispered to me, "On the way here, I finally realized that you took Pidan to the hospital, ostensibly to lure out the murderer, but actually to use this opportunity to get her medical treatment covered by public funds, right?"

I ignored him and kept giving him meaningful glances.

The monkey looked completely bewildered and asked me what I wanted to do.

I said: I am really disappointed in you. How can you come to visit someone in the hospital empty-handed?

Gao and most of them had already given prior notice, so Monkey and I were not hindered from coming and going.

Monkey and I sneaked out of the ward and ran to a fast food restaurant next to the hospital. I ate three large slices of fatty meat and four meatballs before I felt like I had regained my virility.

The monkey rolled its eyes: "It's really not easy to get someone like you to watch what you eat."

"You try it? Three meals of porridge a day, my mouth is so bland it's practically tasteless."

I bought some sausages from the convenience store, intending to sneak them back to satisfy my cravings.

It's been cloudy for the past few days, and it started raining again as soon as I got back to the hospital.

As we passed the outpatient building, Monkey suddenly asked me, "Do you think that dog is still in the hospital?"

Why did you suddenly ask that?

"I just felt that the time that dog made its public appearance during the day was pretty weird."

To help my wound heal faster, I've gotten used to talking less, so I immediately shook my head to indicate that I didn't know. But the same question lingered in my mind.

Suddenly, the monkey tugged at me and whispered furtively, "I bet that woman is an undercover cop!"

I followed his gaze and nodded speechlessly, "Mhm."

Besides being talkative, monkeys also have a common male trait: lust.

The woman was suspected of being an 'undercover policewoman' simply because her skirt was a little short and her legs were a little white.

Hospitalization is actually quite boring. Coincidentally, I have the same "illness" as the monkey. We had just had some meat and were quite full, so we decided not to rush back to the ward and instead found a place to sit in the outpatient hall and enjoy the "scenery".

"Now that I know the taste of sorrow, I say, 'What a fine autumn day!' Young man, the weather is getting colder, and the good days are numbered. You must cherish the present moment," the monkey lamented.

"I'm really impressed by you. There's an old saying that you should be wary of a rogue with culture."

I leaned back in my chair, trying to ease my stomach, when I noticed an elevator in the annex corridor opening and two medical staff pushing a cart inside.

A sudden thought struck me. I looked out the window, then stood up abruptly. "Brother Monkey, come with me."

"Where are we going?" the monkey asked as it followed.

I gestured for him not to ask yet, walked to the elevator, pressed the button, but there was no response.

The monkey said, "This is a private elevator. The elevator operator only controls it from inside after receiving a notification."

The two changed to another elevator, went up to the sixth floor, and came to the stairwell.

Going up the stairs, the door leading to the rooftop was locked.

"This lock is definitely not openable, and if it were opened, it would be illegal."

I tried pushing the door, and the chain lock, wrapped several times, rattled. There was less than ten centimeters of space between the two doors.

I muttered, "Even a dog couldn't squeeze through."

The monkey suddenly realized: "You think that dog was originally hiding on the rooftop?"

I nodded. "Let's go to the inpatient building."

Near the inpatient building, in another stairwell of the annex, the door leading to the rooftop is also locked with a chain lock.

The monkey and I exchanged a glance, reached out and tugged at it a couple of times, and immediately discovered that one loop of the chain was only loosely wrapped.

He opened the door and pushed it open, revealing a half-foot-wide gap between the two doors.

I looked at the monkey again, signaling him to hold the door open, and then crouched down and squeezed through the gap.

The monkey followed and crawled out, standing under the eaves and looking around. "You're overthinking it. Didn't you say the dog's job was to scout ahead? Now that the mission is complete, why leave the dog at the hospital?"

I looked around as well, muttering to myself, "I also want to know, why leave the dog at the hospital?"

At my suggestion, the two of them went to the stairwell they hadn't been able to reach before.

As soon as I got close, I heard two very low moans.

A thought struck me, and I quickly walked a few steps with the monkey to the back.

What I saw stunned both me and the monkey.

Because it's an old hospital, the outpatient building and the annex were built at different times. The two buildings are the same height and their rooftops are connected. The back wall of the elevator lobby is right next to the back wall of the outpatient building's water and electricity room.

There was a gap of about a foot between the two, and there was actually a dog in that gap!

"That's it." The monkey had been knocked over by the dog that day, but I clearly remembered it was the German Shepherd. The monkey, realizing what had happened, cursed, "Damn it, what a freak! Why bother with a dog like that?"

His reaction was naturally for a reason. Compared to humans, dogs' ribs are more flexible, and even though it was an adult wolfhound, a gap a foot wide could not confine it.

The dog wasn't actually stuck in the gap; one of its front legs was caught in a trap, and the other end of the chain attached to the trap was locked to an exposed steel bar at the junction of the two buildings.

The monkey said, "Look at it, it's been trapped here ever since we came to the hospital."

I nodded.

The dog had indeed been trapped for some time. Although it wasn't starving to death, the continuous rain over the past few days, coupled with its injuries, had left it extremely weak.

The monkey peeled a sausage and tossed it over, but the wolfhound only sniffed it and didn't eat it.

I said, "A trained German Shepherd won't easily eat food given to it by someone else."

Seeing that I was about to squeeze through the crack in the wall, the monkey quickly said, "Don't do anything reckless, or it will bite you."

Without saying a word, I went in sideways, first gently stroking the wet dog's head, then stepping on the animal trap. Using both hands and feet, as soon as the trap opened, the wolfhound whimpered and shrank back.

As soon as I crawled out of the crack in the wall, the wolfhound also retreated from the other side.

Then, I peeled another sausage, and it limped over to me, first rubbing against the back of my hand, and then swallowing the whole sausage in one gulp.

The monkey tried to feed it, but it still wouldn't eat.

Seeing that the wolfhound only ate the sausages I fed it, the monkey found it strange: "This guy is so smart, does he know you're a veterinarian?"

As I fed the dog the sausage, I said, "Germain-backed dogs are very intelligent. It knows I'm trying to save it and that I mean it no harm."

I finished feeding the dog the last sausage, stroked its head and said, "Your original owner wasn't a good person. You'll never see them again."

"Woof woof..." The wolfhound whimpered twice and lay down on the ground, as if it could understand human speech.

"Sigh, even a good dog needs a good owner. If you don't mind, you can come with me from now on."

I had just finished saying that when I heard a voice say:

"Is this dog staying at the hospital waiting for its owner?"

Looking up, I saw that it was Gao He who had come. I shook my head slightly and did not reply.

The case of the missing body was considered closed, but Sun Jing was a serial killer.

In order to catch Sun Jing, the police naturally kept a 24-hour watch in the monitoring room.

Gao and Ziran knew exactly what was going on with me and the monkey.

After examining the situation in the crack in the wall, Gao He also looked suspicious. He wiped the rain from his face and asked, "Isn't this dog the pet of the perpetrator? Why would they set a trap for their own dog? And in a place like this?"

I gestured for him to go talk to the monkey under the eaves of the stairwell.

I asked Gao He for a cigarette, lit it, took a small puff, and pointed in one direction with the hand holding the cigarette.

Gao He immediately said, "Your ward, Pidan's ward, and Zhou Dongdong's ward are all on the other side of the inpatient building. This arrangement is to prevent criminals from doing anything through other buildings."

I shook my head. "Brother Gao, have you ever heard of curses?"

"A curse?" Monkey and Gao He looked at me at the same time.

Gao He, ever the capable man, said, "I've heard of it, but don't you think it's nonsense?"

I said, "If you're talking about other things, you could say it's superstition, but I do genuinely believe in the concept of 'amulet'."

I gave an example: "Let's say you're in any public place... let's say you're a patient waiting for your appointment at a hospital, and someone is behind you staring at the back of your head. You might not only feel it, but you could even tell whether their gaze is friendly or malicious."

The monkey said, "Now that you mention it, it seems to make sense."

I continued, "It's not just that. Sometimes, even people without OCD will feel uncomfortable seeing an unsuitable object in an inappropriate place. Over time, this can become more serious, causing people to do things they wouldn't normally do."

Gao He said, "I understand what you mean. You mean that apotropaic is actually about placing certain objects, openly or secretly, to exert pressure on people through their sixth sense over a long period of time, and even to guide them to do wrong things. If that's the case, apotropaic might actually be real."

He suddenly smiled and said, "You've always been interested in these things? If that's the case, it's no wonder Yang Wudao chose you as his apprentice."

I shook my head. "It's not that I'm interested, I've actually seen people use this weird stuff before."

……

After my grandfather picked me up from the mountains, I lived in a village nestled against the mountains until I was admitted to university.

I remember once, I went to a banquet with my grandfather.

When I arrived, I discovered that we were not being served a wedding feast, but a funeral feast.

Back then, I had just started junior high school and was still a little kid. As long as I had something to eat, I didn't care about anything else.

Ever since I can remember, I've known that my grandfather had a problem: he was more protective of his own than anyone else.

Life in the countryside wasn't as good as it is now. Only when someone had a big table would you have the chance to eat a full meal of chicken, duck, fish, and meat. So, let alone children, even some of the older, unruly adults would fight over the main dishes like it was a battle.

I was originally assigned to a table with the children, but my grandfather saw that most of the children at that table were older than me and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to compete with them. So, relying on his seniority, and because no one dared to openly criticize him, he pulled me to their table, which was full of old men.

That's why I heard the old folks talk about it, and then personally experienced a rather bizarre and terrifying event...

(End of this chapter)